philosophy

In video games and movies, an easter egg is a message/feature/etc that’s hidden in the main work for geeks to find. Game developers hide their names in the game, things from one franchise mysteriously appear in another, and private jokes hide in the most inaccessible places in the virtual world. There’s at least one easter egg in the Bible.

If there was only one verse like this, it could be merely an interesting coincidence. They’re in poems and prophecies, which make heavy use of rhetoric and symbolism. But at least 17 places in the Bible mention it, so they’re clearly not a coincidence. Here are a few of them:

Have you ever been in a store and felt like stealing something? The food/toy/whatever looks so good, and maybe it really is as good as it looks. You look around, and you don’t see anyone nearby. The door isn’t far away. You know that you could take it and never get caught.

But you (hopefully) don’t. Why? What is this unseen hand that keeps you from taking what you want? It’s your conscience. And its very existence is irrefutable evidence that there is a god, that he is your creator, and that he is holy.

Unless civilization collapses, robots will eventually make us all unemployable. I’m trying to figure out the least-bad way to do it.

Today, I’ll list some things that I think will help. None of these even come close to solving the problems that universal automation causes, but they’ll help. I’ll also list some things that I don’t want to properly endorse, but I think will do more good than bad.

I’m not going to try to predict exactly when your job will disappear. People have said for a long time that robots will take everyone’s jobs now and they’ve always been wrong thus far. I know why. Instead, I’ll list some things that I think will be signs that robots are about to take everyone’s jobs, and leave you to come to your own conclusion.

Unless civilization collapses, someone will eventually make a robot that can do anything you can do, for free. I’m trying to figure out the least-bad way to do this. Today is brainstorming day – in which I’ll try to come up with the most idealistic, unrealistic, best imaginable way this could turn out. I hope that this will give me some ideas for how we could improve our lot outside of utopia. For the benefit of utopians who actually believe that this best-case scenario would work without any serious problems, I’ll also explain why it won’t work in practice.